The logo of Al Jazeera Media Network is seen at its headquarters in Doha, Qatar, June 8, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Naseem Zeitoon
Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera reported on Thursday on a fake poll claiming that nearly half of Israelis support sexual assault on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
The news outlet posted the fake poll on its Arabic-language Twitter account X/Twitter with a custom graphic and the headline “47% of Israelis support sexual assault on Palestinian prisoners, according to poll by Israel’s Channel 12.”
The tweet has since been deleted.
🚨BREAKING NEWS: Al Jazeera just published the fabricated poll that Rashida Tlaib promoted yesterday.
Al Jazeera – and its Qatari overlords – are the enemies. pic.twitter.com/Llf5puzbmN
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) 8 August 2024
The exact origin of the fake poll is unknown, but an image of it made the rounds in anti-Israel social media circles last week.
Many users pointed out that it should have been obvious that the survey was fake, as the question was clearly added later and was not part of the original image.
Nevertheless, it was posted by professors at American universities and even a member of the US Congress.
Noura Erakat, a professor at Rutgers University, published the fake graphic with the caption: “If you tell a society it has the right to commit genocide, it will certainly believe it has the right to rape.”
US Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) retweeted Erakat’s post.
A @RutgersU Professor posted a digitally altered photo accusing Israelis of supporting a soldier’s right to rape Palestinians. This is as close to a real ritual murder legend as you can get, in my opinion. It was retweeted by @RashidaTlaiba US congresswoman.
Hope it gets deleted soon with an apology. pic.twitter.com/i8FhmtDyUD
— David/Dovid Bashevkin (@DBashIdeas) 8 August 2024
Erakat later deleted the post and wrote, “Representative Tlaib trusted me and it was my mistake to post this without cross-checking.”
She continued, “But surely you understand that this poll can be believed in the light of the video of a gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner and the Knesset, and the public debate about whether such a rape should be OK. THAT is the shame, Alex.”
In recent weeks, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have arrested guards at the Sde Teiman detention center for allegedly sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner. A video later emerged showing the assault taking place behind a wall of guards apparently designed to ensure that the cameras did not record it.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the allegations “appalling” and said: “There should be zero tolerance for sexual abuse or rape of prisoners, period.”
The prison has been under scrutiny for months after CNN reported on whistleblowers who revealed alleged torture and humiliation of prisoners there. The prison may soon be closed, and Israeli documents show there are only 28 prisoners left at the facility.
This is not the first time that Al Jazeera has spread false information that it later had to retract.
In 2019, she produced a video claiming that the Zionist movement misrepresented the Holocaust. It was posted on Al Jazeera’s younger, hipper channel called AJ+ with the caption: “Gas ovens killed millions of Jews… So the story goes. How true is the #Holocaust and how did the Zionists benefit from it?”
Two journalists were suspended because of the incident.
In June, Al Jazeera reported on footage of a dog from the Israel Defense Forces’ Oketz canine unit apparently attacking an elderly Palestinian woman. The brutal scene sparked an outcry against the Israeli defense force online and across the Arab world.
However, according to the Israeli Defense Forces, the German Shepherd in the video was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists, who then used the video to film the attack before killing the animal and rigging its body with explosives in case Israeli soldiers tried to rescue their four-legged comrade.
